


Little Lure

by InsideTH3fire23



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham has a kid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsideTH3fire23/pseuds/InsideTH3fire23
Summary: Will Graham kills Hobbs for an entirely different reason.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 9





	Little Lure

Prologue 

She wears a black dress and black pumps and carries a clutch holding nothing but tissues.

The fact was her mother was dead.

Victoria was dead and somehow that was a let down. Not because she was taken too early or left Alais alone, but because it didn't change a damn thing. 

Of course, there had been the initial shock, the crushing realization that her mother was gone from the world and never coming back. And then, Alais remembers that Victoria was never a parent, not in any way that mattered. 

Her mother would of laughed at that. _You cannot think you will cut yourself free of me so easily. I live in you, in your bones, the delicate coils of your mind. I made you. I formed the thoughts you find, the moods you carry. Your blood whispers my name. Even in rebellion, you are mine._

“What a bust huh, Victoria?” She whispered quietly. Scrutinizing the face of the woman in the pictures.

She couldn’t place the smile.

She couldn’t recall the laughter.

She had no frame of reference for the spirit captured in film.

She briefly wondered if Photoshop was that good that it could transform the essence of a person so completely. She wondered if that’s what happened to Victoria's pictures.

Then an irrational fear overcame her. _What if that's how other people see her._

She finally steps back, ambling towards her seat, all eyes on her. 

There's a moment during the clearly rehearsed speech where she stops listening. The pastor is saying words but Alais is just tired of all the lies. Lies and more lies. Cold all over, wet and freezing. She's shaking. When did she start shaking?

"Alais," he says using the same tone he does when he finds a new stray. "I know-"

She bristles at that. "I'm going to stop you right here and say you don't know what you're talking about."

Her birth father, Will Graham, doesn't seem insulted. He just stares at her profile while Alais keeps her gaze straight ahead. Will is- Alais isn't sure. They aren't similar, they both keep to themselves, but Alais doesn't think that means anything. 

"Alais."

There's flare of her temper in the flickering blade at the corner of her mouth, a cut of caution to anyone who knows her. "Yes."

"I want to help." Will pauses. "In fact there's nothing else I'd rather do."

Will looks down at his feet and truthfully Alais feels a little guilty. His glasses lie crooked on his face and he is rumpled all over...and despite never actually talking to her until this moment he is still willing to take her. Even though she's been nothing but snarky and contemptuous towards him.

Alais won't cry.

Alais wants to hold onto her anger; possibly even lash out, but she's just so _tired_ of fighting.

Fighting for control.

Fighting to hold onto what she has.

Fighting for what she _doesn't_ have.

Just, _fighting_.

It's exhausting.

"You're pitying me," Alais said unapologetically, voice calm and slow. "I don't need that. I don't need guilt-ridden, melodramatic bullshit. So if you're only here to ease your own conscience about the daughter you never knew existed then you can step off now."

Her gaze carries weight, it burns, with it's myriad of unspoken accusations. 

"Fair enough," Will concedes. "That's not why I'm here."

"I don't have any answers for the ripper either," she bit out harshly. A dagger thrown in the dark. "I'm not in his head."

"I'm not here for him, Alais."

She laughs lightly at that. A private joke maybe. 

"I don't get it," Alais whispers. Her eyes on the closed coffin. "It hurts but it also doesn't. Or, it hurts for all the wrong reasons. Or the right ones, I don't know."

Alais feels something heavy settle in her chest at the growing silence. She thought this part of her life was over. She thought she managed to overcome everything and come out unscathed, but she was wrong.

It's there.

Suffocating.

Choking.

“Your mother always did have a reputation for leaving a trail of destruction in her wake,” he muses softly. 

“Don't call her that." Alais’s lips are pursed, her gaze elsewhere.

There’s something unbearable about the persistence of her rage, how raw it is. 

“I’m sorry,” Will says in a quiet voice. “I wanted to call you, really I did, after I found out that you were mine. But I didn’t think you’d be able to forgive me for not being there for you. Maybe I figured if you hated me for it, it would be easier for you.” Will exacts a pause from the messy, unkempt silence. “I’m sorry, Alais. You deserved a lot more from me than silence.”

"That’s… remarkably honest of you.”

There’s a poise that Alais carries now, all calm and stillness – it’s different, somehow, from the stilted mask from seconds before, and Will is half-envy, half-mesmerized by it. She’s beautiful, too, radiating with a glow that isn’t quite contentment but isn’t the restlessness Will had been accustomed to seeing.

She's his. 

When he looks into her eyes, they're his eyes. Her hair is dark and wild in curls, much curlier than his ever was. Her skin brown, lighter than her mother's but darker than Will's. Her face is rounder, lacking a defined curve for her cheekbone but her jawline is sharp. She has dimples and freckles and she's his. 

Will feels disjointed, like someone had taken his world and flipped it on it's axis.

Alais stares back at him, her chest rising and falling shakily as she attempts to stop her tears from spilling. After a moment, Will takes a tentative step towards her and when nothing catastrophic happens, he takes a few more steps. 

He doesn't say anything. Instead, he wraps his arms around his daughter. 

Alais is tense for a few moments, before she relaxes into her father's foreign embrace. It's comforting, and she doesn't know how that can be, because she honestly can't remember the last time she was hugged by anyone. 

It's too much, all of a sudden, and Alais moves to pull away, but Will just holds her tighter, and it's enough to open the floodgates.

Alais doesn't even know how it happens, but the tears surprise her, and she finds herself burrowing into her father's warm body and crying.

Sobbing, really.

She doesn't even know what for.

It makes her feel awful and weak and needy, and she hates it. But, then, Will is rubbing her back and kissing her hair and murmuring reassuring things, and Alais feels something simultaneously break and repair within her.

Eventually, Alais yawns, and then sighs. "I think _I'm ready to go now,_ " she says, almost self-deprecatingly.

Will kisses her forehead. "Okay we can go."

She laughs again. Those words don't seem right. 


End file.
